marxy's musing on technology

I don't go out to see bands very much but recently we attended a dinner and show by The Martini Set . It was an enjoyable evening but wh...

Peter, VK3YE, recently posted a video of a pair of 2.4Ghz transceivers he bought at Aldi for $20. They worked OK but had a number of obviou...

I've been a fan of Pete, N6QW, since hearing him on the excellent Soldersmoke podcast and blog .  Pete has built many home brew transcei...

A note to others. Just now I was trying to program an RP2040 board using Arduino IDE 2 on Linux and got this error:  "Exception: [Errno...

Lucky to have the space for this sort of thing, I had put up a full wave "sky" loop for 80m. It was suspended from a number of tre...

Just picked up a few of these breakout boards. I'm not sure that I like the screw terminals but it is handy having LEDs on each GPIO pin...

A friend had some boxes of yachting gear left in Melbourne and I kindly agreed to drive it up to him at Dorrigo NSW. Along the way I visited...

I like using SDR++ to remote control my AirSpy receiver but I was missing the tuning knob. SDR++ can be tuned with the mouse wheel but I fin...

It's only a few short weeks since the Ballarat hamfest but as I live pretty close it was a no-brainer to head over. There was an excelle...

The name is inspired by a line from Elvis Costello's song "Radio Radio". I like to listen to radio in an earpiece when I wake ...

Recently I strung 80m of wire up in a loop attached to trees. It's not as good as my dipole for transmitting but it makes an excellent ...

WSPR Watch , my iOS app for quickly looking at spots on WSPRnet, is 12 years old. During that time it has been updated as the software tools...

A few friends came from around the state including Shepparton, Bendigo and Melbourne. We stayed at a local motel and had a nice dinner and w...

I have a 12.8V 12Ahr Lithium battery but I wanted to avoid a mess of wires when using it in the field so went looking for a box to house all...

Some great work by Jon Dawson on his 101 Things project  "A collection of cool projects to make!". Jon clearly describes how he ha...

Someone mentioned that it's possible to generate RF with a Raspberry Pi PICO with no external oscillator. There is a library by Roman Pi...

This week I discussed the World Economic Forum's risk report which lists AI as second only to climate change. You can listen here if you...

David, VK3KR, drew this to my attention. There is amazing work being done to remove radio noise from sideband signals. Check out the demonst...

I was looking around for a nice way to power a small radio when operating in the field. I have various batteries but nothing in a convenient...

Fortunate to have space for this, I have put up a horizontal full wave loop for 80m. I cut 82m of wire, put up the loop and trimmed it down ...